In the related art within industrial plant environments, particularly those utilizing Industrial Automation (IA), field devices are used to measure physical properties, quantities, or characteristics, such as flow rate, temperature, level, or pressure. Additionally, field devices can be used to modify these physical properties for the purpose of controlling the process or providing safeguards to the IA process.
In some cases of providing safeguards to the IA process, the field devices can be configured to notify a user or system of excessive measured physical values, and triggering an alarm based on the conditions or notifying device diagnostics.
Software is being developed to leverage advanced capabilities of such field devices in addition to performing basic configuration and calibration of the field device. Software functions can use different industrial standards, such as FDT and DD, to configure the field devices.
One software standard group is the FDT Group that has an FDT standard with an aim of standardizing a communication and configuration interface between field devices and host systems. The FDT standard is intended to provide a common environment for accessing the field devices' more advanced features. As such, any device can be configured, operated, and maintained through a standardized user interface, regardless of supplier, type, or communication protocol.
Within the FDT standard, the software application for the field devices are referred as a Device Type Manager (DTM). The DTM is a software component for a device that contains device-specific data, functions and logic elements. DTMs can range from a simple graphical user interface for setting device parameters to a highly sophisticated application that, for example, can perform complex calculations for diagnostics and maintenance purposes or can implement arbitrarily complex business logics for device calibration.
Each DTM can have one or more functions, such as:                Observing device status;        Reading device diagnostics;        Showing device values (values in the field and additional parameters);        Calibrating the device;        Testing device and storing results as history;        Displaying trend;        Reporting on the device;        Performing device testing;        Performing device simulation; and        (Other OEM service functions such as firmware upgrading).        
A field device can have one or more associated DTMs. The DTM is hosted by an FDT Frame Application or Host System.
There are also some scenarios where the same function needs to be both integrated to a DTM and also implemented as a standalone application. In other words, the function can be an application on its own. In such a case, the function can be written as a component (software code/file). The component is the same when integrated to a DTM and as a standalone application. When the function is integrated to an application (DTM or standalone application), the application is referred to as a function host.
The DTM which hosts the function is eventually hosted by an FDT Frame Application/Host System. Different function hosts have different architectures, for e.g. host can be a standalone device maintenance application, a device software library (e.g. DTM). In general different hosts may have different approaches to host new functions.
When making changes to a DTM, such as adding a new function, care must be taken to prevent degradation in the performance of the DTM, and impact to other existing functions of the DTM.
FIG. 1 shows a related art example when a new function is necessary for a field device. When a new function is needed for a DTM (S101), a new function is developed in the DTM (S102) and the DTM is modified to integrate the new function (S103). After the new function is developed and integrated, the new function is tested (S104). After the new function is tested, there is regression testing of the old functions (S105) in the DTM to ensure no degradation has occurred to the old functions due to the modification of the DTM. If the DTM is acceptable, then the DTM can be released for use with the new function (S106) to end the update process (S107).